A company that should be named, shamed and shunned (via the Sydney Morning Herald):
Cisco, one of the world’s largest technology companies, is being sued by Chinese political prisoners for allegedly providing the technology and expertise used by the Chinese Communist Party to monitor, censor and suppress the Chinese people.
Dan Ward, of US law firm Ward & Ward, has brought the case on behalf of Du Daobin, Zhou Yuanzhi, Liu Xianbin and ten unnamed others. He compared Cisco’s actions to “IBM’s behaviour in Nazi Germany”.
Cisco has rejected the allegations as baseless but has failed to respond to serious questions stemming from an internal company presentation.
“Cisco has, for years now, knowingly aided and abetted the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing efforts to stifle the free speech and discourse of its citizenry,” Mr Ward told Fairfax Media.
“Dating back to the early 2000s, Cisco competed for contracts with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to help design, develop and implement the ‘Golden Shield Project’ – a rather Orwellian euphemism for the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing effort to monitor, track and censor all internet traffic into and out of China.”
According to court documents, Mr Du spent three years in jail, Mr Zhou is currently a prisoner in his own home and Mr Liu has served two months of a 10 year sentence. All three claim to have been tortured and abused over articles they published online.